How quickly can I expect to see results?

Search engine marketing campaigns must always be regarded as a process rather than an event. Continuous testing and adjustments in the entire user experience mark the most effective campaigns.

How do you make a campaign effective?

Making a campaign effective includes adjusting bids, ad copy and geographical targeting in the paid search campaigns, building traction and rankings in the natural search campaigns and improving the overall user experience on the website to better retain and compel qualified traffic to action. None of this should be rushed – changing too many variables in too short a time does not allow the marketer the opportunity to identify the changes that caused either positive or negative results in the campaigns.

For this reason, generally GDMI recommends a minimum commitment of 6 months for a search engine optimization program. That said, an important variable is the credibility of the website with the search engines at the launch of the SEO program. If it is already well established, the client can expect to see improvements in visibility and web traffic. If it is a brand new website, improvements may not be seen for quite some time.

Long term strategies.

Clearly SEO is a medium to long-term strategy and as such is not the fastest way to achieve instant results. For that, paid search is the answer. Again, there are many variables that will determine the depth and speed of improvement in a paid search campaign. Among these elements are medium term strategies such as building and using landing pages and improving the overall user experience of the website. However, rebuilding and re-launching a paid search campaign employing best practices can affect the fastest improvement.

Putting everything in motion.

In 2008, GDMI took over the management of a search engine marketing campaign on behalf of one of the best-established Internet retailers of video equipment for the extreme sports industry.

The first step in this campaign was analyzing the existing paid search campaign that the client had previously been managing internally. This analysis revealed that not only was there room for improvement in the manner that the campaign was structured, but also that the campaign was not properly tracking conversions and revenues to the keyword level (a conversion or this campaign is identified as an online sale).

GDMI restructured the campaign according to Google’s best practice guidelines, grouping related keywords together in a series of ad groups and matching them with variations of highly relevant ad copy. Also, conversion codes were integrated in the correct places to insure for more efficient management of the campaign.

ROI Improvement.

The effects of these adjustments were startling. Within the first month of GDMI taking over management of the campaign and making these changes, client revenues from their search engine marketing campaigns rose by more than 60%, providing a near immediate return. Work has continued since then to build on this early foundation of success, with improvements in the user experience of the website, a search engine optimization campaign and social media campaign all initiated.